The WPI Team

NEIL HEFFERNAN

PROJECT DIRECTOR AND Co-FOUNDER

Neil Heffernan is a professor of Computer Science and the co-director of the PhD program in Learning Sciences and Technologies. He developed ASSISTments not only to help teachers be more effective in the classroom but also so that he could use the platform to conduct studies to improve the quality of education. He is very passionate about educational data mining.

Professor Heffernan enjoys supervising WPI students helping them create ASSISTments content and features. Several student projects have resulted in peer-reviewed publications looking at comparing different ways to optimize student learning.

Professor Heffernan's goal is to give ASSISTments to millions across the US and internationally as a free service of WPI.

Cristina Heffernan

PROJECT CO-FOUNDER

Cristina began her career in education as a math teacher in the Peace Corps. She went on to teach middle school math in the inner city and at an elite private school sector.She began working with teachers while a graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh. As one of the co-founders of ASSISTments Cristina has been instrumental in nurturing the system to be a tool for teachers to improve what they already do well in the classroom.

DAVID MAGID

SOFTWARE ARCHITECT

David has been working with software design and development for over 25 years and has been with the ASSISTments team since 2009.

Christopher Donnelly

Software Architect

Chris has been working with ASSISTments since 2013 when he started as a graduate student. In 2015 he graduated with his masters in computer science and now works as a full-time software engineer with ASSISTments.

LULAMA MOYO

GRANTS COORDINATOR & TEACHER SUPPORT SPECIALIST

Lulama began working with ASSISTments in the Fall of 2017. She has joined the team coming from an Education and Youth Development background. Lulama graduated with an Accelerated Master's Degree in Community Development and Planning from Clark Universitywhich she used to research the achievement gap for African Diasporic learners in the US. Lulama has taught and run various youth programs domestically and abroad and utilizes her experiences to give incite into her work with ASSISTments.

ASSISTments Team

The research team consists of Master's and PhD students working closely with Neil Heffernan, David Magid, and Chris Donnelly to expand and improve ASSISTments.

work Study student Team

There are 27 undergraduate work study students from WPI who we have employed to assist us in building ASSISTments content.